Existence of Noah's Ark

Actually, you don't need a computer model. Here is a calculator for the volume of a sphere.Go there and calculate two spheres. One at the base radius of the Earth. The other at the base radius plus enough to float the Ark. Then convert the answer to whichever measuring unit you want to use.Once you get it worked out, all you need is the mechanism that will maintain the cycle for the year or so that the Ark floated around and the mechanism that reversed the flow to float the boat back up the mountain.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

A more obvious answer is that they have generations that are measured in minutes or hours.However, there is a problem with speciation there. How do you decide you have a new species in asexual organisms?You're also somewhat right with the complexity (whatever the heck that is ) note. It seems to me anyway that a more complex organism will have a harder time speciating. Something I've been very surprised to learn from posters here is that we've seen a number of one generation speciation events in complex organisms. So it does happen and more frequently that I would have ever expected. Easily enough to give us a few new species a year when spread over 10's of millions of complex organisms.

Again, I will explain to you.The way I am saying it, you wonldn't need as much water as you are claiming it would take to flood the earth, as all the water would not be at the same level, due to run-off. Just like water at the top of the stream is not at the same level as the place it filters into.

How much water will it take to float the Ark?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

riVeRraT responds to me:

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I live on a very steep mountain of about 500ft.

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Five hundred feet? That's it?I used to live in Albuquerque. The city was a mile above sea level and the Sandia Mountain above the city was another mile up.

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If we get a rain storm here of just 4" in one day, then the entire hill floods.

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Do you seriously think that if Albuquerque got four inches of rain in a day (and remember, this is desert so flash floods do happen), it would cover the mountain?And finally, you're missing the point: Where do you think that rain came from? Consider the First Law of Thermodynamics as an analogy: Everything has to go somewhere. If you have more water where you are, it has to have been taken from somewhere else. Your flood is another area's drought. The covering of your land with water is the uncovering of someone else's land.

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If you could picture the mountain as being a giant sponge.

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No, I can't. Mountains aren't sponges. They don't absorb water.

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I'm sure that the hydrostatic pressure under the ground must be intense, with 500ft of alttitude behind it.

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Then why isn't Albuquerque flooded right now? It sits at the base of a mountain that is one mile high! Every year, the moutain gets covered in snow. One of the longest trams in the world is in Albuquerque and unless you want to drive around to the other side, you take it to get to the top of the mountain so you can go skiing down the other side.So why doesn't Albuquerque get flooded every year as the mountain absorbs that water and it gets compressed by the pressure of a one mile high mountain?Come on, you said you value your "common sense" so think about it. If you seriously think that a 500 foot hill is enough to make someone worried about water, what about a mountain ten times as tall? One would think that the poor Nepalese would be living in a swamp since Mt. Everest if 5 times taller than Sandia.

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What if something here in earths history caused the oceans to produce so much rain over the land, that the run-off couldn't keep up with the rain.

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Physical impossibility.If you take the water away to put it into the sky, you necessarily uncover the ground the water was sitting on. There's is a fixed amount of water on this planet. If you add water to one area, you have to take it away from somewhere else. To cover one spot, you have to uncover another. It has to be that way or the earth would be flooded right now and it isn't. We have dry land. A lot of it. Over 97% of the world's water is in the oceans. That's the lowest point. All of the dry land is above that point. Every drop of water you take out of the ocean lowers the ocean level and exposes more dry land. Even if you take that water and put it on dry land, you have lowered the ocean level and necessarily caused dry land to appear.And how on earth do you think the run-off couldn't keep up? Rain comes in droplets. Runoff comes in rivers. That means that there is necessarily more water in the runoff than there is in the rain. If you were to take a snapshot of a cubic foot of rain, you'd find that most of that cubic foot is filled with air. Even in a downpour of biblical proportions, rain is rain and not a continuous stream of water.But a cubic foot of runoff is mostly if not entirely water. Thus, the runoff can easily keep up with the rain.The reason why you see things like flash floods is because the runoff ends up collecting in a single spot. The water came down hard and fast and immediately ran down to the lowest spot which happens to be the lowest spot for the entire area: All roads lead to Rome, in essence.And note, this directly contradicts your "giant sponge" claim. The reason why you have a flash flood is because the ground cannot absorb the water. The water comes down too quickly for the topsoil to absorb and it immediately runs off......leaving dry land since the water is no longer there but has run off. Somewhere else downstream is now flooded, but the local area is not and since the water had to come from somewhere, somewhere else is now showing more dry land than it had before.

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But if you measured it, I think it takes about a day for the water to get from where I live to the sea, which is about40-50 miles from here.

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You "think"?

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So you can see the potential for the water backing up.

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you?How on earth does water "back up"? The earth is not your bathroom sink that can get clogged. It isn't like there is a pipe leading from the mountain to the sea and the entire snowcap is encased in concrete such that the only way to get from the mountain to the sea is through the pipe.If the most direct route is blocked for whatever reason, the water will find another way to go. Water flows. If something is in the way, it flows around the obstacle.And once again, the only way you can have an excess of water here is to have a dearth of water there. Floods happen. But so do droughts. You cannot have a flood without a concurrent drought somewhere else. The bigger the flood, the bigger the drought.

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Just how much rain would be required for this to happen to biblical proportions, I do not know.

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That should be easy...even for someone with only a ninth-grade education.I'll give you the answer, first: In order to flood the earth, it requires three times more water than currently exists on earth.Now, think about how you might go about calculating this. You are essentially trying to determine the volume of a shell covering the surface of a sphere. An easy way to do this, then, is to take the volume of the sphere without the shell and subtract it from the volume of the sphere-shell complex. That'll get you the volume of the shell.The volume of a sphere is 4/3 * pi * r³. Now, the earth has a radius of approximately 4,000 miles.But Mt. Everest, the highest point on the earth, is five miles above sea level.Thus, to flood the earth, we need a shell of water about five miles in thickness. Therefore, the volume of the shell is:4/3 * pi * 4005³ - 4/3 * pi * 4000³ = 1e9 cubic miles of water.Now, according to the US Geologic Survey, the earth has only about 3e8 cubic miles of water, total. Thus, you need three times more water than the earth actually has in order to flood the earth. It physically cannot be done.And remember, we are trying to flood on top of the ocean. Over 97% of the earth's water is in the ocean. We are trying to put water on top of the ocean. We obviously can't use the water in the ocean because that's our base.So not only do we need more water than the earth has, but we also can't use any of the earth's water to do it. It has to come from somewhere outside of the earth.Think of it this way:

Height of Mt. Everest----------------}
} Dry
} Land
Ocean surface~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}-----
}
}
Ocean floor==========================}

You are trying to fill the space between the ocean surface and the height of Mt. Everest. If the only water available is the water between the ocean floor and the ocean surface, how do you plan on suspending the water between the ocean surface and the height of Mt. Everest without it immediately falling back down to the space between the ocean surface and the ocean floor?And how do you plan on doing that without creating dry land in the process as the ocean surface level drops?

Height of Mt. Everest----------------}
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~} <- suspended water
} dry
land
ocean surface~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~}-----
}
ocean floor ==========================}

If you were to suspend the entire ocean into the air, you'd expose the ocean floor which becomes dry land.Everything has to go somewhere: If you cover one area with water, you have to take it away from somewhere else. The only way to cause a flood is to create a drought. For every bit of flooded space you wish, you have to create some dry land somewhere else.

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I wish I could make a computer model of what I am saying to cleary show you guys.

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You don't need to. Your problem is that you keep thinking locally rather than globally.Yes, local areas can and do flood. But they don't flood with local water. They flood with water that came from somewhere else.Lake Mead in Las Vegas is an artificial lake created from the damming of the Colorado River by Hoover Dam. Suppose Hover Dam broke. The land downstream would become flooded, yes?But what would happen to Lake Mead? It would drain, yes? As the area downstream gets covered in water, the area underneath Lake Mead gets uncovered. You create a flood by creating a drought. The water is either covering up the land downstream of Lake Mead or covering up the land underneath Lake Mead. It cannot cover both at the same time.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

riVeRraT writes:

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I wonder why its only the simple life forms that pop up so rapidly. Besides of the obvious answer of complexity.

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Actually, complexity is a tiny, tiny issue.Think about it:How long does it take for a human being to go from birth to reproductive age?How long does it take for a single-celled organism to go from birth to reproductive age?Speciation happens when genes mutate and become separated from the original organism. Genes really only mutate when they replicate themselves at cell division. If it takes decades for an organism to produce the next generation, we're not going to see speciation happen very often in that species because it takes so long.But if it only takes 20 minutes for an organism to produce the next generation, we just might see speciation happen by the end of the week if not the end of the month.That's why the phage experiment with E. coli is such a good high school biology experiment: It doesn't take very long for a single E. coli bacterium to fill up an entire petri dish."Simple" life forms pop up rapidly because they take hardly any time to go from one generation to the next.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

riVeRraT responds to me:

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The way I am saying it, you wonldn't need as much water as you are claiming it would take to flood the earth, as all the water would not be at the same level, due to run-off.

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But the runoff can handily keep up with the rain. The earth is not a clogged bathroom sink. There is no pipe forcing the water to go down one way and one way only. Water flows. If the most likely route is filled, it finds another way to go.And you still haven't dealt with the problem that if you flood the ground here, you necessarily had to expose the ground somewhere else. Everything has to go somewhere. If you have extra water here, you have to have a dearth of water there.Take water away from the ocean and you lower the ocean level and thus create more dry land. Suspend the entire ocean in the air and you expose the ocean floor which now becomes dry land.

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Just like water at the top of the stream is not at the same level as the place it filters into.

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Right, but you're forgetting that water at the top of the stream is not at the bottom. Therefore, it cannot be covering up land at the bottom of the stream. A single molecule of water can only be at one place at any given time. If it is covering land here, it cannot be covering land there. And if it came from there, that necessarily means that the land there is now exposed.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Wow, again you have just turned around everything I said, and you don't get it.
Tell your precious mountain wouldn't flood after 3 feet of rai, rhain.And since the earth surface is 73% water, the ocean could drop in proportion, and not expose that much land that wouldn't be covered by run-off. Why don't you ask the people liveing in flood plains.
Why does my mountain flood, and the incline is 30 degrees?
Why is there every any floods at all? Because water backs up, duh. It can only run-off so fast.
Again ask the people living along the mississippi if water backs up, even though it can run-off.Or stay in my basement during a flood time on my mountain, and see if your feet don't get wet.You just don't get it.There are engineers that specialize in what I'm saying. It is a major concern for every slope, hill, plain. I guess we don't need these people, because water always runs off right rhain? No it doesn't. Thats what I'm saying. Your to stuck in what you think is right, as if you had all the answers. You need to wake up and realize that there could be another way of something happening, one that you couldn't think of.
How could you possibly pretend to know exactly the only way the earth can flood? Thats closed mindedness, which is un-scientific. No I am NOT, I am trying to calculate run-off. No, I want to think globally. I'm not saying I know what could have caused this condition, but if it did happen, how would it look?It could rain over land, and not rain over the oceans. How, I don't know, thats a separate part of the theory, or thought. If the oceans were hotter than all the land, this could happen right?

Why do you duplicate your answers?I can't believe your logic sometimes.

You still haven't dealt with the problem of flooding in one place means that there is less water someplace else, rat.

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Why do you duplicate your answers?

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I would imagine that he duplicates his answers for the same reason many of us duplicate our answers; because the person we are responding to keeps making the same mistakes.

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I can't believe your logic sometimes.

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Actually, Rrhain is very, very good at formal logic and math.He has quite a lot of formal training in both, although I actually hesitated before writing that because I am afraid that you will discount what he says precisely because he has this formal training.I think the problem you are having is one of understanding.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-26-2004 08:20 AM

riVeRraT responds to me:

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Wow, again you have just turned around everything I said

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Incorrect.Instead, I detailed how you don't even understand the words that are coming out of your own mouth.You are ignorant, riVeRraT. And worse, you are so ignorant that you don't even comprehend that you are ignorant. As the cliche goes, it is a wise man who understands how little he knows.This is a documented phenomenon: Those who don't understand something overestimate their ability in it while those who know a great deal underestimate their prowess.I handily admit that I am not a physicist. The gods of physics and I have had a long, tortured history. Not only did I need to take physics twice as an undergrad, but you know those carnival rides where everyone gets in the big barrel, it spins around really fast, and then the floor drops down with everyone sticking to the wall?I don't stick. I go down with the floor. It isn't a question of weight. I just have a very low coefficient of drag, it seems.Note: There is nothing wrong with being ignorant. Everybody is ignorant about something. But ignorance can be cured by simply studying the topic in question. The attitude that you can somehow "common sense" your way through something you literally know nothing about is fatal.

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Tell your precious mountain wouldn't flood after 3 feet of rai, rhain.

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You think three feet of water is enough to cover something 5280 feet tall? Aren't you short by about 5277 feet?

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And since the earth surface is 73% water, the ocean could drop in proportion, and not expose that much land that wouldn't be covered by run-off.

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(*blink!*)You did not just say that, did you?The land goes all the way down to the bottom. The continents do not float on the surface of the ocean. If you raise the ocean, you expose the land between the ocean surface and the ocean floor.Do an experiment for yourself: Get yourself a large, solid, water-proof object that doesn't float. Put it in the bathtub. Fill the bathtub with water so that it comes about halfway up the object.Now, using only the water that is currently in the tub and without moving the object or dismantling it or adding any other apparatus to the tub, try to cover the entire object such that it is completely submerged and remains submerged for 20 minutes without any interference. You can do whatever you want to the water, but when you are done you need to stop whatever it is you are doing and the object needs to remain completely submerged for 20 minutes. Use a bucket to pour the water on top of the object, stir up the water all you want, doesn't matter. But when you're done, you need to stop doing it, remove all the apparatus, and watch what happens.Will the object remain submerged for 20 minutes or will there be some parts still sticking out above the water line?Note: Don't be disingenuous and talk about freezing the water into an ice coating. The water must remain liquid.

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And how on earth do you think the run-off couldn't keep up? Rain comes in droplets. Runoff comes in rivers

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Why don't you ask the people liveing in flood plains.

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(*sigh*)Do you read posts before you respond?Where do you think people who live in flood plains go when the plain floods? That's right: They go to where it isn't flooded. And how can they get there? Because in order for location A to be flooded, location B has to have a dearth of water. Under normal circumstances, location A is dry land. The only way to get location A covered up in water is to take the water away from location B. But when you take the water away from location B, you expose dry land.

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Why does my mountain flood, and the incline is 30 degrees?

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Because it isn't a mountain. It's only 500 feet tall. We went through this before. Do you bother to read posts before responding?

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Why is there every any floods at all?

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Because there are droughts elsewhere. We went though this before. Do you bother to read posts before responding?You cannot create a flood without creating a simultaneous drought somewhere else. No molecule of water can be in two places at once. If it is here, flooding location A, it had to be imported from location B and thus NOT covering location B, thus exposing dry land at location B.Think of it as the First Law of Hydrodynamics: Water cannot be created nor destroyed. In order for you to have water here, you have to take it from somewhere else.Let's go back to our object in the bathtub scenario. Suppose the object is a bucket (a big, heavy one that doesn't float when half-submerged). Draw a line around the outside of the bucket at the waterline.Now, using water from the tub, fill the bucket to overflowing. When you stop, you'll notice that the outside of the bucket is still not covered in water after 20 minutes. Thus, we still have dry land. But notice that the water in the tub doesn't reach the waterline you just drew. In your effort to flood the inside of the bucket, you had to remove water from the tub which reduced the amount of water in the tub reserve. And while you certainly have covered more surface area on the inside of the bucket than you have exposed on the outside, the fact remains that you have exposed dry land in the process.You created a flood inside the bucket by creating a drought outside it.

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If the most direct route is blocked for whatever reason, the water will find another way to go. Water flows. If something is in the way, it flows around the obstacle.

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Because water backs up, duh. It can only run-off so fast.

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(*sigh*)You're thinking locally. You're thinking short term.According to the Bible, the flood lasted for months. What flood lasts that long?If you've got a flood here, you necessarily have to have a drought somewhere else.

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Again ask the people living along the mississippi if water backs up, even though it can run-off.

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(*sigh*)I used to live in Omaha. I currently live on the bank of the San Diego river. I know what happens when a river floods.It flows away. As soon as the deluge that caused the flood stops, the water flows away.And in the process, a drought is created elsewhere. There was a recent flood in Pennsylvania of the Ohio River.Meanwhile, we're having a drought here in Southern California. Where do you think our water went?

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There are engineers that specialize in what I'm saying.

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Yep, and they all know that you can't have a flood without causing a drought somewhere else.

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I'll give you the answer, first: In order to flood the earth, it requires three times more water than currently exists on earth.

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No it doesn't.

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Why not? Did you even bother to read the mathematical explanation before responding? Where is the error? Is the earth not about 4000 miles in radius? Is Mt. Everest not 5 miles above sea level? Is the volume of a sphere not 4/3 * pi * r³?Be specific.

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How could you possibly pretend to know exactly the only way the earth can flood?

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Because I am a mathematician and I understand topography.Do the experiment for yourself: Find yourself something that doesn't float, put it in the bathtub, and fill up the tub so that it's half-sunk.Please explain how you plan to completely submerge the object using only the water that is currently in the tub and with no outside apparatus such that it remains completely submerged for 20 minutes.We're waiting.

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You are essentially trying to determine the volume of a shell covering the surface of a sphere.

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No I am NOT, I am trying to calculate run-off.

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(*sigh*)If it's flooded, it isn't run off. Run off is moving water. Flood is static water. It doesn't matter how fast the water is running off because if it's running off, it's returning to the lowest point: The ocean. And if it's running off, the place it is running from is being uncovered.We need to keep the water there for months. It cannot run off until we say so.

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You don't need to. Your problem is that you keep thinking locally rather than globally.

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No, I want to think globally.

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There is no "want." There is only "do."You can "want" to think globally for all your worth but until you actually do think globally, you will fail.Where does flood water come from? I want a literal and direct answer to that question. If I am going to flood Florida (which, considering that for quite some time...and I think this might still be true...the Matterhorn at Disneyworld is the highest point in the entire state), where am I going to get the water?And how much water am I going to need in order to flood Florida? Again, I want a literal and direct answer to that. Can I just dump, say, a Florida-shaped column of water 200 feet tall and be satisfied that all of Florida will remain completely submerged for three months?And don't forget: Where did that water come from? When you figure out how much water I'm going to need to flood Florida, what happens to the rest of the world?

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It could rain over land, and not rain over the oceans.

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No, it couldn't. The surface of the earth is 70% water. It is impossible to have it rain only on the dry land. Florida just got hit by four hurricanes in a row. Are you seriously claiming that there was no rain until the clouds were over land? Hurricanes come when tropical depressions off the coast of Africa travel across the Atlantic ocean. Do you seriously think they don't rain along the way?Do you pay attention to the weather reports at all? Hurricanes lose their strength when they hit land. That's why the Gulf Coast is having trouble with Ivan: It was a massive hurricane that hit land and lost strength...but had enough punch to make it back out to open water and gain strength again.Storms happen over the ocean because they are over the ocean. When the clouds hit land, they tend to dump their water pretty fast.Take Hawaii, for example. It's a tiny island out in the middle of the ocean. It rains nearly every day there. However, there is a desert on Hawaii. A desert, as we recall, is a place that gets less than 10 inches of precipitation per year. How can this be when it's raining nearly every day?Simple: The desert is in a rain shadow. The clouds generally pass over in the same direction. When they get over land, they lose their ability to hold water, especially as they approach the peak, and end up dumping their water. By the time the air mass has made it over the peak, the water is all gone and there's nothing left to rain on the other side.You literally do not know what you're talking about and you don't understand that you don't know what you're talking about.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

riVeRraT responds to me:

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Why do you duplicate your answers?

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Because you make the same mistakes over and over again. And it's because you don't understand the topic at hand that you make the same mistakes.If you make a new mistake, you'll get a new response. But the reason why 2 + 2 != 5 will always be the same no matter how many different ways you try to say it.

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I can't believe your logic sometimes.

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Have you considered the possibility that this is because you don't understand logic?Do you know the Monty Hall problem?You're on Let's Make a Deal and Monty has chosen you. He presents you with three doors. Behind one is a fabulous prize and behind the other two are goats. You are given a free choice of which door you want.But before you open that door, Monty gives you a choice. Suppose you chose Door #1. Monty, who knows where the prize is, shows you Door #2 to show you a goat. He offers you the chance to change your mind and take Door #3.Do you? Why or why not?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

OMG, you guys are just not reading what I wrote.
Why do I have to explain it again?

Rhains logic is very flawed. I have proved this time and again. I will continue to do so.There is no need for duplicate answers to the same problem, it does not make him twice as right, thats poor logic.